Summertive Evaluation

I really enjoyed this project as I chose a topic I had a huge interest in. It held components of psychology and biology, which I did at A-level, and history and art which I love. I love the evolutionary approach and I also love the concept of spirituality, so looking into Homo sapiens relationships with animals in both of these ways was really interesting. It was also a topic I only had basic knowledge on so it meant I found out loads of fascinating new facts and ideas such as those talked about in Sapiens, The Postmodern Animal and A Brief History of Mankind.

I think my sketchbooks are really strong because it was a massive challenge for me to try to depict the 'truth' of the animal so I had to create loads of work to attempt this! I explored in my dissertation if this was even possible. I decided that for me, the most appropriate practical thing to create would be something that confronts or challenges, or even just documents and shows, the relationship humans have to animals. I am not a vegetarian, nor am I an animal rights campaigner. But I do find it funny how we are so immune to the fact that we have made ourselves the most dominant species on earth, and have seperated ourselves so completely from the rest of the animal kingdom- a feature which fundamentally has allowed us to exploit them unnecessarily due to ignorance, lack of understanding or empathy. 

My practical work focused on a concept of a made up animal: the Credit posteri - which means Believe it future generations -in latin. I chose this name because the whole concept of the piece is, yeah it may seem all a joke, a fake animal... but it shows what we do to real animals throughout history and every day. It is important that we keep the past in mind for the future - we, according from the evolutionary perspective, have evolved from a common ancestor, yet we treat animals with so much less respect than each other. 

I am overall really  happy with my final practical work as I think I have employed lots of different practices and media while also depicting a lot of the elements of dominance in the human-animal relationships. This product is meant to be a collection like the cabinets of curiosities of interesting worldly objects which are displayed in museums such as the Pitt Rivers and galleries like the ME Gallery in Berlin. 

If I were to do this again I would just go to much greater lengths to create the objects. I would spend ages making the animal life like to go in the jar. I would also make it water proof so that I could put liquid or jelly in the jar -this would make it look much weirder and realistic (effective!). I would also want to invest in a large cabinet to hold them, and paint it like I have painted the case... but I think it would be much more easily presented in a cabinet than a chest/suitcase. It would probably also look much more valuable and professional. The audience for this piece is actually anyone because it is aimed at telling the story of all humans various relationships with animals. It would contextually stand in galleries or museums, but the individual pieces themselves all have their own contextual situations, such as the jarred specimens and the toy keyring!